Our Expertise / Our Finance expertise / Elevate your Finance department / Financial Function diagnostic
Financial diagnostic: evaluate and improve your finance department, tools and processes
What is a financial diagnostic?
​
A financial diagnostic — also referred to as a finance diagnosis or financial diagnosis — is a structured, 360° assessment of your finance function. It looks at your organisation’s people, processes and systems to evaluate their alignment with your company’s strategy, growth stage and operational needs.
​
Far from being a theoretical exercise, this diagnostic provides a pragmatic and actionable view of your finance department’s strengths, weaknesses and blind spots.
​
What is the purpose of a financial diagnostic?
​
The primary goal of a financial diagnostic is to help you take a step back, gain clarity, and build a finance function that fully supports your business ambitions.
​
It’s particularly valuable during key transitions — such as rapid growth, fundraising, acquisition, or leadership change — when internal pressure increases and weaknesses start to show.
​
A well-conducted financial diagnosis gives you:
-
A clear picture of your current structure and capabilities
-
A roadmap to professionalise and future-proof your finance team
-
Concrete priorities to optimise roles, processes and tools
-
A neutral basis for internal alignment and team engagement
When to consider starting a financial diagnostic?
​
Growth, fundraising, market expansion or leadership change often reveal structural weaknesses in your finance team. As a CEO or CFO, you may feel stuck in fire-fighting mode — constantly reacting to urgencies while losing sight of key financial insights.
​
Several situations signal the need for a deeper rethink of your finance organisation:
-
You’re growing fast — and your team can’t keep up
-
You’re preparing for a transaction or audit
-
You’ve lost a key team member and want to rethink the structure
-
You feel you’re lacking visibility or control on financials
-
You’re unsure if you’re getting the best out of your current resources
These challenges raise essential questions:
-
Are roles and responsibilities clearly defined?
-
Are the right profiles in place?
-
Are your tools still adapted to your company lifestage?
-
Is your current team structure aligned with your business priorities?
​
This may be the time for your company to gain altitude and identify the root causes of your financial department challenges, put order in chaos, and have your financial department regain its central role as enabler of business growth.
​
Through a financial diagnostic, you can identify the strengths and weaknesses of your current finance department.
​
At Altesia, our financial diagnostic goes even further than this thourough assessment. It is followed by a clear action plan towards finance operational excellence. This includes:
-
A list of actions to be taken
-
An assessment of the necessary ressources in time and in people to implement them
​​
This action plan is meant as an actionable tool for all stakeholders involved - from the most junior team member to the CFO and CEO, to guide your path towards clarity and efficacy.
​
With a well-thought financial diagnostic, translated into a complete action plan, your finance department will become more than just a back-office function, but take its place as a true enabler of business value and growth.
4 signs you need a financial diagnostic
Lack of structure
Mistakes and lack of control
Demotivated finance team
Change and transformation
You feel overwhelmed by financial disorder and wish to bring clarity and organisation.
You are facing issues such as uncontrolled spending, errors in reporting, lack of explanations about your financial situation, or your accounts are not approved.
The finance team members feel overwhelmed by the workload or demotivated. They complain about being overqualified for certain tasks.
Your company is reaching a new growth stage and requires scaling up or reorganizing the finance department.
How we help you
We analyse your financial operations in depth to identify inefficiencies, opportunities for improvement, and set a new course towards operational excellence.
​
Our approach goes further than mere number crunching and document analysis. We engage directly with your team to capture their knowledge and their impressions.
We combine a helicopter view of your organization's internal dynamics with the ability to zoom in on operational details.
This comprehensive method ensures we grasp the full picture and the intricacies of your business and company culture. This allows us to identify and implement tailored, effective solutions for your organisation.
The result of a financial diagnostic
At the end of this exercise, you will receive a comprehensive report of about 50 to 100 pages including the following elements:
​
-
The finance function analysis report according to the People, Process, Systems axes, detailing the gaps between the existing situation and the ideal situation.
-
The action plan: a table listing all the actions to be implemented. Each action is associated with an estimate of the workload and the required function.
-
A summary report of the interviews conducted.
​
This report stands out for its balance: it combines strategic vision with concrete, operational recommendations, making it directly usable by both leadership and finance teams.
The format is clear, structured, and designed to be shared — not just filed away.
It becomes a working tool to guide action, communicate priorities, and coordinate efforts across departments.
​
By involving an experienced external financial expert throughout the process, you also benefit from a fresh, independent view — and gain a strong lever to engage your teams around a common roadmap for professionalisation and future-readiness.
What our clients say
Altesia’s diagnostic combines high-level strategic insights with operationally detailed action plans. It was an extremely worthwhile investment.
The quality of the report, the strategic vision, and the highly actionable roadmap truly impressed us. A level of quality you would expect from a top-tier consulting firm — fully adapted to an SME
Laurent Haverbeke, CEO at Exphar
Our finance diagnostic methodology
01.
SITUATION ANALYSIS
We analyse your current situation vs. your ideal situation accross 3 dimensions:
-
Your processes: We scrutinize in detail a total of 8 financial cycles (Cash Management, Order to Cash, etc.).
-
Your tools: we map out all of your tools and analyse their contribution or obstacles to operational efficiency
-
Your people: we analyse the workload of your team members and the match between their tasks and their position or experience level
​
This analysis is carried through:
-
Interviews: We hold discussions with about ten stakeholders from the finance department or in contact with the function:
-
Internal stakeholders: team members or internal clients
-
External stakeholders: external auditor, banker, or investor.
-
-
Internal documents: existing reports and internal memos​
02.
GAP ANALYSIS
How are far are you today from your ideal situation? We analyse with you the difference between the current state and the desired state, prioritising what matters most to you and your organisation.
03.
ACTION PLAN
We elaborate a fully detailed plan, structured and prioritised, to get you to the ideal situation. We quantify the time and resources needed for it.
What we don't do
Working with Altesia ensures you excellent work ethics and professional integrity.
What you won't have with us:
-
No superficial "quick scan" type report.
-
No action plan that is disproportionate to your needs: no overkill.
-
No "one-size-fits-all" approach: we take into account your realities in terms of resource, teams and company culture.
-
No analysis carried out by a junior profile, or by someone lacking consultancy or internal experience.
